Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women's Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy

FATNESS AND THE MATERNAL BODY: WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES OF CORPOREALITY AND THE SHAPING OF SOCIAL POLICY Maya Unnithan-Kumar and Soraya Tremayne, Eds. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011 Fatness and the Maternal Body: Women's Experiences of Corporeality and the Shaping of Social Policy is a collection of articles which demonstrate the significance of "fatness" through different cultures. It is the result of a series of workshops and seminars facilitated by the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group (FRSG) at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology hosted by the University of Oxford in 2006. This collection focuses on cultural socialization and perspectives of "fatness," and their links to reproduction, health risk, obesity, and status. The articles explore data from the United Kingdom, Africa, and India, presenting the differing cultural standards placed on "fatness" of the female body (pre and post-natal), and the direct relationship to obesity, health, social and political status, and wealth. This compilation explores what it means to be "overweight" (socially, culturally, and medically). The editors take care to note that there is unfortunately no discussion of male "fatness", and its effects on reproductive health in this collection, it being a highly under-researched area. The perspectives of "fatness" that are presented are culturally and socially linked to their country of origin. In the United Kingdom, for example, the articles depict mothers who are clinically overweight or obese who prefer terminology such as "big boned", and relate their size to genetics. The associated social stigma discussed is that they do not recognize healthy nutrition, are from lower income housing, and will have unhealthy "fat" babies because of their poor dietary routines. The risks of diabetes and low birth weight babies are outlined in these articles also. The overarching medical assessment is that something must be initiated to stop the perpetuation of the obesity cycle. The problem raised is that there is no generic answer as to when an interruption of said cycle serves the patient/public best. As one of the study subjects from Chapter 2 asserts, overweight bodies, through pregnancy, are replaced by a "thriving, glowing and healthy body [which] was meant to eat, allowed to eat." The reader views this subject who recognizes that she shouldn't perhaps eat as much as she does, or as poorly, but is relishing pregnancy because food is no longer negative. This perspective contrasts that of the African tribes studied for the workshop/seminar series. …